


Whom Gods Destroy (They First Make Mad)

by face78



Category: Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll, Alice is Dead
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Brothels, Creepy, Descent into Madness, Drugs, Film Noir, Gangs, Gangsters, Gen, Madness, Other, Prostitution, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Theft, Trans Female Character, basically any sketchy mafia activity you can think of, mafia, shakedowns, this is not a wholesome fic- seriously
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 17:30:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1656608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/face78/pseuds/face78
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Alice fell through the hole into Wonderland she was only eight years old. From that day forward she was never quite sure if she had simply gone mad that day playing in the sea or if she had really fallen through a hole and into a land populated by the insane. Either way, Alice had not known how to survive in a world where up was down and sane was mad and murder seemed to be the order of the day for most of the inhabitants. </p>
<p>That's where the syndicate came in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whom Gods Destroy (They First Make Mad)

When Alice fell through the hole into Wonderland she was only eight years old. From that day forward she was never quite sure if she had simply gone mad that day playing in the sea or if she had really fallen through a hole and into a land populated by the insane. Either way, at eight years old, despite being a precocious child, Alice had not known how to survive in a world where up was down and sane was mad and murder seemed to be the order of the day for most of the inhabitants. So young Alice had gone to the city, where she had heard from a not overtly hostile caterpillar (when she could get a lick of sense out of him) that the Queen might be able to help her. Alice had perked up some at hearing that Wonderland had a queen. After all, every civilized country could be counted on to have a queen, couldn’t they?

Alice had tried to clean herself up as best as she could before being presented to the Queen, but was quickly beginning to suspect that she needn’t have bothered when a burly man named Tweedle Dum brought her to a filthy warehouse instead of a palace.

“Are we not going to see the queen?” she asked timidly.

“We’re waiting,” grunted Tweedle Dum.

“For the queen?” pressed Alice.

“For instructions.”

“ _Well, this place did seem awfully dirty for a queen,_ ” thought Alice, “ _Perhaps we’re waiting for someone to give us directions to the palace?_ ”

Alice didn’t have a watch, so she had no way of knowing, but to a very little girl who was impatient to get home it seemed as though she had been waiting for hours when the sleek black limousine finally pulled up, the reflection of its headlights glaring off of the brackish rainwater that had begun to puddle in the sunken street outside.

“ _How awful of me to make the queen come out in this rain! I do hope she’ll understand that I was in a terrible hurry…_ ” Alice fretted silently.

Alice was peering through the rain at the car outside trying to catch a glimpse of her royal highness when suddenly the driver’s side door opened to reveal a greasy-looking impish creature with a sly smile that revealed glimpses of rotten, yellow teeth.

“ _Oh dear, I do hope that’s not the queen…_ ” thought Alice, feeling a bit unkind for thinking the little imp so ugly.

The imp, however, took no note of Alice’s well-concealed disgust and continued on to the passenger side door of the limo, opening it with a bow so low his dirty beanie cap fell off and into a puddle on the ground.

Alice couldn’t see well within the smoky darkness of the limo, but she did manage to catch a glimpse of a stockinged foot wearing shiny black heels and felt better to know that she would be dealing with a woman of class. The imp, picking up his hat out of the puddle and shoving it haphazardly onto his head (even though it was soaked through and made an awful squelching noise when he put it on), opened a tattered umbrella and held it out for whom Alice was certain must be the queen.

A very tall and beautiful woman emerged from the car and Alice immediately took note of the way she held herself proudly, with the carriage of a queen.

_“Although, I’ve never seen a queen quite so… flashy… before_ ” thought Alice, taking note of the terribly gaudy and louche dress the woman was wearing underneath the fur stole wrapped around her shoulders. She also seemed to be wearing quite a lot of dramatic makeup for a royal personage and Alice wasn’t quite sure what to make of this woman in light of what she knew about the British monarchy from school. The queen of England had always dressed in a stately and reserved manner and she couldn’t make the image of this striking woman line up with the image of the queen that she’d had in mind.

The woman walked sedately towards Alice, the train of her dress dragging through the rain, though the soaked hem somehow managed to do nothing to diminish her appearance of elegance. When the Queen stopped in front of her and bent to look at her face, Alice politely demurred and backed up a few steps, surprised at the Queen’s proximity. The Queen, however, simply moved forwards again without moving from her stooped position so that her eyes were once again level with Alice’s and their noses were almost touching. This time Alice merely blushed and tried not to feel unnerved by the intense scrutiny.

While the Queen was busy searching Alice’s face for some unknown quality, Alice was busy noticing that the Queen was indeed very heavily made-up. The contours of the Queen’s face were decidedly more masculine than they appeared from afar and the makeup seemed intended to play up the delicacy of her features by softening the hard angles and strong lines of her face.

“Who are you?” asked the Queen, taking a drag from her sleek cigarette holder (which, Alice noted, was not actually holding a cigarette). The Queen had a much deeper, huskier voice than Alice was expecting, and she almost startled upon hearing her speak.

“I’m Alice. Very pleased to make your acquaintance, your majesty” said Alice, curtseying her very politest curtsey.

“What is an Alice?” asked the Queen imperiously.

“Alice is my name, your highness” replied Alice, a bit bewildered by the question, although she felt she answered as politely as she could under the circumstances.

“But what does it mean?” pressed the queen. “I am the Queen because I am a queen. He” she said, pointing to Tweedle Dum without taking her eyes off of Alice, “is Tweedle Dum because he is a fool. And he” she pointed this time to the impish creature, “is Tweedle Dee because he is his brother’s twin.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what Tweedle Dee’s name has to do with his being a twin, your Highness” said Alice uncertainly.

“Because Tweedle Dee is the twin of Tweedle Dum, so of course his name is Tweedle Dee! What else would you call the twin of Tweedle Dum? Keep up! Keep up!” explained the Queen, as if this was all very natural and Alice was being exceptionally dull by not understanding.

“I’m afraid I’m terribly confused” said Alice who felt herself flush and tried to cover her embarrassment behind her hands.

“Well why didn’t you say so in the first place? It would have made things far simpler!” The Queen seemed as though she were becoming annoyed and her smile was of the sort that implied she thought herself very magnanimous indeed for indulging this poor dullard.

“No, my name is not confused, although I am quite confused; it’s Alice!”

“Which brings us again to the question of what is an Alice?” the Queen pursed her lips severely as she said this, as though she found repeating herself as distasteful as sucking on a lemon.

“Alice is my name!” cried Alice; for by this point she had grown quite distressed.

“What a strange name! It doesn’t seem to mean anything at all!” laughed the Queen.

Alice’s face burned. “I think it means ‘of the nobility,’ your Highness. At least, that’s what my mother told me…” she trailed off.

“Why, of course that is your name! You’re an associate of mine, therefore you must be of the nobility! And since you are an associate of mine, you must come and stay with me at The Castle where you will tell me all about how it is that I’ve never once associated with you who are my associate!”

The Queen seemed pacified and in good spirits once again so Alice chose not to question her circuitous logic any further and merely let herself be herded into the car by Tweedle Dum. Tweedle Dee opened the door for Alice and then shuffled back to where the Queen was waiting and escorted her to the car, trying his best to hold the ratty umbrella over her head but mostly only succeeding in holding it in front of her eyes so that it did no good at all. The Queen, however, seemed to take little notice of the rain and simply walked along at a leisurely pace, her eyes distant and dreamy. When she reached the car she somehow managed to fold herself into it elegantly despite her exceptional height. Tweedle Dee slammed the door behind the Queen, catching the tail of her dress in the door. The Queen once again took no notice and simply sat puffing on her nonexistent cigarette while Tweedle Dee scuffled off to the driver’s seat. After staring stupidly at the ground for a moment, Tweedle Dum slowly lumbered after his brother and tried to follow him into the driver’s seat as well. Tweedle Dee made a terrible ruckus and kicked him out of the car. He then continued to kick him all the way round the car and into the front passenger’s seat where the befuddled Tweedle Dum finally sat down. He could just barely fit into the car and when he did manage it, it made the car list awkwardly to one side.

The car trundled unevenly down the pothole infested road, leaving its odd assortment of occupants to their thoughts. Alice and the Queen were separated from the front by a black screen through which no sound could be heard, but Alice imagined that Tweedle Dum would be staring blankly ahead and Tweedle Dee would be occupied with driving the unsteady vehicle. The Queen seemed disinclined to explain anything at all to Alice now that she was trapped in the car and was content to sit smoking her nonexistent cigarette luxuriously. This left Alice, distressingly, with only her thoughts for company. The Queen and her associates did not seem very helpful or indeed very sensible at all and Alice dearly wished that she had not gone with these strange people. She missed her mother and father and Margaret and Dinah and even her horrible brothers who teased her and… oh! She found herself struggling to hold back tears.

“Why are you crying, dear girl?” asked the Queen, as though this were an unfathomable reaction to being trapped in a car with three very strange strangers.

“Oh! It’s just that I miss my family terribly and I’m… really very homesick” said Alice weakly, wiping at her eyes furiously.

The Queen procured what appeared to be a used tissue from somewhere (she seemed to have appeared it from the recesses of her dress somewhere, but Alice was unsure where she could possibly have been keeping it) and handed it to Alice in what was clearly a very calculated effort at being kind. Alice took the tissue (despite its crumpled appearance) and dabbed at her eyes delicately.

“Where is it that you hail from, my sweet child? You did not say earlier. Perhaps you are from the forest?”

The Queen suddenly seemed very keen to continue the conversation.

“I’m from London and I don’t know how I got here at all. What is this place called, if I may ask?”

“My dear girl, I’ve no idea what manner of place ‘London’ is, but you are in Wonderland now. Wonderland is _my_ kingdom and you will be quite welcome here. But first you must tell me more about how exactly it is that you come to be here. Did you perhaps fall through a hole?”

The Queen’s eyes had a very queer look to them that Alice was not at all certain she liked, but she answered nonetheless.“I don’t know. I just remember playing in the ocean one moment and then I was falling the next. I don’t understand what happened, but it was as though I were drowning and then I was flying?”

The Queen was delighted when she heard this. She smiled a most unnerving smile and said “Ah! So it would seem that you’re from The Above. Listen closely to me, Alice of the nobility, because I need your help with something. I need you to tell me everything you can about The Above. It’s very important that you tell me everything you can remember about the world you were in before. And it’s especially important that you tell me anything you can remember about your trip here.”

Alice felt strangely relieved to hear that she had apparently fallen into another world. “So I’m not crazy!” she cried. “This place did seem ever so different from home but I’d never have guessed it was a whole other world! If I tell you everything I know, your highness, will you help me get home?”

“Why of course! I will take you there myself, darling girl! But if you want to go home you must tell me everything you can about The Above; only then will I be able to find a way to take you back.”

And so Alice spent the rest of the car ride answering the Queen’s questions: some of which were standard (‘What is that you call your world?’), some of which didn’t seem to be related to anything relevant (‘How would you describe your country’s military force?’), and some of which seemed to make no sense at all (‘Is it very brillig where you are from, my dear?’).

Alice had been so busy answering questions that she had taken not the slightest notice of where they were going. When the car pulled to a stop, Alice looked out the window and grew pale. They were outside of a dingy building with a neon sign brightly heralding the moniker “The Castle.” There were more neon signs decorating the building advertising scantily-clad women performing a number of acts that made Alice blush. One woman swung her hips from side to side with each rhythmic blink of the sign, another could be seen opening and closing her legs in the shape of a ‘V’ in the air, while yet another was locked in a cycle of continuously bending over to reach for some unseen item on the ground- one moment her skirt hanging from her waist, the next hanging over her head while her frilly undergarments peeked from underneath.

“Frabjous! We’ve arrived!” exclaimed the Queen, stepping out of the car and onto the dirty sidewalk leading up to The Castle.

When Alice made no move to follow, the Queen reached into the car and grabbed hold of her around the upper arm, pulling Alice along in her wake. Alice noticed that for a slender woman she was unusually strong.

“Your Highness, is this a…a… ‘house of ill repute’?” Alice had only heard the term used a few times before, when her mother would get angry at her father after a night of drinking and carousing, but she had never before seen such a place and only had a dim idea of what gave such places their deplorable reputations. Even as a child, though, Alice knew that any lady from polite society would be caught dead before entering such a place.

“This may not be the most high-class of my establishments, my dear, but I assure you it’s a far cry better than being out on the streets of ill repute! You’ll come to no harm under this roof which is more than can be said of most places, now that we’re in the city proper, so I’ll hear no ill spoken of it” said the Queen with an insulted air, accompanied by a proper little ‘harumph’ and an upward tilt of her nose.

Alice put up no further protest and let herself be dragged roughly towards the door by the Queen, though she tensed up considerably at crossing over the premises’ threshold.

When they entered, the Queen stopped in the doorway and clapped her hands together loudly. Somehow, the loud music from within cut off abruptly and a spotlight was on the Queen in an instant, making Alice squint to see The Castle’s interior. Alice couldn’t see much beyond stages where people in different stages of undress had apparently been dancing while shadowed figures waved various objects at them. Most of the silhouettes had been waving what appeared to be bills, but some waved other objects: a butter knife, bags of pills, a rubber duck, a teapot that was spilling tea all over the surrounding patrons, a stethoscope, fine china, an empty bottle, a button, and so on and so forth. There seemed to be no coherent pattern to what the dancers accepted as payment. Indeed, Alice saw a man dressed as a vicar (if vicars were prone to wearing rhinestones) passing around a collection basket where people were tossing in their items and wondered whether the patrons even knew who or what they were giving to.

Alice blushed violently and looked pointedly at the ground, but was rudely awoken from her study of the sticky, shiny floor by the Queen dramatically throwing off her stole. The Queen launched it onto the bar where it landed on top of several glasses which crashed to the ground to the delight of the crowd. All of the patrons began to cheer and Alice heard shouts of “Give us a show, Queenie!,” “Long live the Queen!,” and “No one does it better!”

“Alice, my dear, Tweedle Dee will escort you upstairs to your room. After all, you must be very tired, you poor thing! I’ll see you in the morning and we can talk more about how to get you home, but for now you simply must get some rest” said the Queen, shooing Alice over to Tweedle Dee, who was waiting by a stairwell.

Alice, who really was quite tired, didn’t protest and simply followed Tweedle Dee silently up the stairs into a dingy room with a small, lumpy bed. Alice sat on the bed and Tweedle Dee said nothing, turning to shut the door behind him on his way out. Once he was gone, Alice heard the telltale click of a lock sliding into place. She felt she should be worried, but, in some small way, it managed to make her feel a little bit safer from all of the strange, careless people downstairs. So Alice tucked herself tightly into bed, and, after a time of lying there, her thoughts a nervous jumble, fell into a fitful sleep.

 

What Alice could not have known, being asleep, was that there was quite the show taking place downstairs.

Once Alice had gone upstairs, someone from the crowd had tossed a tiara to the Queen, who put it on and began to sing in a low, husky voice; the bartender leaping towards a dirty gramophone to turn on the music for her.

The Queen began to saunter slowly through the crowd of patrons, singing in a sultry voice:

`Twas brillig, and my slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy went my borogoves,

The moment that I saw you, babe.

 

Beware the words of men, my child!

Their jaws that bite, their claws that catch!

Beware those Jubjub girls so wild,

They will your virtue try to snatch!

 

The music picked up the tempo a little and the lyrics grew saucier as the Queen exaggeratedly swung her hips from side to side:

 

So take your vorpal sword in hand (Here the Queen made a rude gesture):

And seek you out a manxome ho

Come rest with me in my Tumtum tree,

I’ll make you breakfast ere you go.

 

On the last line, the Queen winked at a man in a dark suit sitting alone at a table before continuing, drawing ever closer to his table as she sang:

 

And, as in uffish thought I stand,

I see you there, with eyes aflame,

Come whiffling towards my outstretched hand,

As if I’ve made you tame!

 

Now that she had reached the table where he sat, the Queen was artfully draping herself over the man, who was clearly enjoying himself. He did, indeed, yield to her touch like a tame beast, though he always kept one eye on the briefcase sitting in the chair next to him. 

The man was starting to get into the act, himself, when all of the sudden, without warning, the Queen violently jerked her hands- which had been softly petting his head- and snapped the man’s neck.

She remained singing the entire time, never missing a beat:

 

One, two! One, two! And through and through

My vorpal blade goes snicker-snack!

I leave you dead, and with your head

I go galumphing back.

 

The Queen stood up and raised her hands to signal for applause, which the crowd gave willingly and enthusiastically as several large, dark suited men came to remove the body while Tweedle Dum collected the briefcase and put it in a safe in the back room.

 

"And, hast thou rode the massive cock?

Come to my arms, you naughty boy!

O frabjous day! What ecsta-say!”

They call out looking coy.

 

By the end of the refrain the crowd was cat-calling and whistling and generally being obscene. But the music slowed down once again, and they gradually quieted as the Queen sang, in almost mournful tones:

 

`Twas brillig, and my slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy went my borogoves,

The moment that I saw you babe.

 

The last note lingered hauntingly for a moment, before the crowd burst into applause again. Her song finished, the Queen blew a kiss to the corpse (which was on its way out the back door), took a bow, and sauntered off to a dressing room in back where she methodically, almost ritualistically, removed her makeup, revealing the satisfied smile of the dangerous man beneath.

 

The dozing Alice knew nothing of the frightful scene that had taken place below or of the extent of the Queen’s criminal behavior, but she did hear distantly, through the haze of sleep and the thin walls, the bloodthirsty cheers of the Queen’s posse lulling her into a deep sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Whew! This is by far the longest chapter I've ever written for a fic! Anyways, here's my Alice is Dead fic- it probably won't make much sense if you've never played the games so, yeah, go play them if you haven't. The Queen's song is just The Jabberwocky with most of the nonsense words kept as stand-ins for more vulgar words. Making it into a dirty song was actually surprisingly easy since half of those words sound kind of dirty, anyways. I mean, vorpal sword? slithy toves? Also, massive cock was the only thing I could think of to rhyme with Jabberwock that had the same amount of syllables so, there, my gift to the world of fanfiction is a song about dicks set to the rhyme scheme of The Jabberwocky. If anyone ever feels like setting it to music, please, do let me know lol.


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